Remix.run Logo
▲ gkanai 8 hours ago

How does Globalstar's offering compare to Starlink?

▲hbarka 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Globalstar flies highest, with orbits at ~1400 km. Starlink is at ~340-550 km. Per satellite, a higher altitude sees a larger portion and provides greater angular visibility of the Earth's surface at any one time. Globalstar is suited for low-power devices, emergency sat messaging, and IoT, not broadband speed. One reason they made a good fit with the iPhone. Also the valuable spectrum.

▲nonethewiser 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

9.6Kbps

Not a joke

▲cj 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's their legacy product.

2nd gen is 256 Kbps

▲kotaKat 4 hours ago | parent [-]

2nd gen was 72kbps, never got to 256. Apple stepped in and got them to write the whole 2nd gen Duplex network off before it got that far.

▲jandrese 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Au Contraire, that bandwidth is definitely a joke.

▲AdamN 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does it also make modem sounds??

▲jmcqk6 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They are serving different needs.

▲hylaride 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The spectrum and various other rights are probably worth more than the current kit.

▲cmiles8 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well that’s more than most people can get out of Leo today so it’s a start!

▲gizajob 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

9600bps ought to be enough for anyone.

▲noumenon1111 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks, Bill.

▲fred_is_fred 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's enough bandwidth to play Trade Wars and SRE so it's good enough for me.

▲amitp 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

:-)

Tangent: SRE was very color-heavy and that led to some long ANSI sequences. From the recently decompiled source [1] you can see that I tried to pick shorter ANSI sequences when I could. In particular, going from color 0x0* to 0x1* we could save 1 byte, and going back to the default white on black we could save between 1 and 4 bytes. But if you're bandwidth limited there's also an option to turn off color entirely.

[1] https://github.com/joeshaw/sre-reconstructed/blob/main/src/s...

▲lossyalgo 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why no Legend of the Red Dragon? :(

▲quietsegfault 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What about LORD?

▲toolcocoon 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i would think that globalstar is specialised in IoT and Starlink more as an extention of the cellular coverage.